Regulators of the above kind are widely used in stoves to allow an easy assembly of the stove. They have a housing which is provided with receptacles to accommodate the required number of regulators for the particular stove. The regulators are mounted in the receptacles to form pre-assembled units, which can then be easily mounted to the stove.
In the previous regulator assemblies the regulators are mounted to the housing by means of screws. Accordingly, each regulator needs to be exactly positioned so that the screws can be fitted into corresponding screw holes. When it is desired to alternatively mount different kinds of regulators in the housing, the housing has to be provided with screw holes fitted for all these regulators. Since usually the screw holes of different regulators are provided in different positions the number of screw holes needs to be comparatively high, even when the outer dimension of the regulators are identical.
Furthermore, the screws have to be mounted using a defined torque. If the torque is exceeded, the threaded portion of the screw or the corresponding screw hole can be damaged. In contrast, if the regulator is mounted with an insufficient torque, the regulator will wobble in the receptacle. A user who operates the regulator will feel the wobbling, which is not acceptable due to safety and quality restraints.
The screws can furthermore loosen due to thermal influences. Especially with the high temperatures generated in stoves, materials underlie high temperature oscillations. This leads to frequent expansion and shrinking of the housing and/or the screws and causes the screws to loosen.
Especially when the mounting portion of the housing for mounting the regulator is rather thin, the portion between the screw head and the threaded portion of the screw may be larger than the thickness of the mounting portion. In this case situations can occur in which the screw is already tightened up in the screw hole, but the screw head is not yet in tight contact to fix the regulator in the receptacle.
Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a regulator assembly and a stove of the above mentioned kind, wherein the regulators can be easily mounted to the housings.